The process of researching, designing, and fabricating a model recreating a 1961 floating sculpture by French artist Marta Pan in a collaboration between the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, Cambridge, and the Skissernas Museum, Lund.

July 31, 2008

July 17 - 26. Lund

We meet with Skissernas Museum director Elisabet Haglund and staff Jens Arvidson and Örjan Bellind to review and coordinate exhibition planning, including research for the Rammed Earth Sculpture Garden. Lund University architects Finn Werne and Gunilla Svensson, our hosts in Baastad, have arranged for a tour of a new development of local rammed earth houses. We are joined from Stockholm by rammed earth specialist, architect Lars Allan Palmgren.

Lars shows us documentation of his most recent rammed earth project, a building in Stockholm ingeniously designed using rammed earth "logs" woven like a basket.

In the town of Harplinge, 80 kilometers to the north, there is a new development of five rammed earth houses. The developer, Fleming, and his wife welcome us with a beautiful late morning coffee in the garden. We are joined by the project architect and the builder, each named Hans.

We travel to Knislinge as guests of the Wanås Foundation to see the memorial and monuments exhibition "Loss" and the new installation of Ann Hamilton's "aloud."

We also visit the renowned artist-weavers' showroom and workshops, Märta Måås-Fjetterström, and a fifteenth-century church in Baastad. In Lund, we tour two local gardens, Mary Hill, a private garden, and the public Botanical Gardens.